Dev Watercooler - The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

Post by perculia

The item level and stat inflation on gear gets more and more pronounced between expansions--or even new patches. The devs wanted to touch upon this problem at BlizzCon, but ran out of time. In this Dev Watercooler, they address the problems related to stat budgets and propose several solutions. Nothing is set in stone, but the solutions are really interesting to analyze.

We've also got some minor changes to 4.3 PTR patch notes at the end of the post. Of particular note is that Tol Barad Veteran now requires 25 wins, down from 100, and Death Knight pets now properly inherit their master’s crit and spell penetration stats.

Dev Watercooler

The lead designers were originally going to talk about this topic at BlizzCon, but it didn’t really match the content of the rest of our “Intro to Pandaria” presentation, and seeing as how we finished our 90-minute slot with 93 seconds remaining, there wouldn’t have been room for it anyway. But several of us did bring up the issue with players and media we talked to, and it even ended up in at least one FAQ, so we figured we’d go ahead and get the information out there. Note that unlike much of what we presented for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion, this is not an announcement. It’s more of a problem we’d like to address, and a couple of ways we potentially might do so. Feedback is certainly appreciated.

Big Number Syndrome
Hey, our stats are growing exponentially. If you look at everything from the Strength on a weapon to the damage being done by a Fireball crit or the amount of health the Morchok boss has, they look downright absurd compared to the numbers for level 60 characters in the original shipping version of World of Warcraft. It’s not exactly a surprise that we were going to end up here, and we knew where we were going every step of the way, yet regardless, here we are.

The numbers grew so much primarily because we wanted rewards to be compelling. Upgrading from a chestpiece that has 50 Strength into one that has 51 Strength is undeniably a DPS increase for the appropriate user, but it’s not a very exciting reward. Such negligible increases can drive players to do some weird things, such as skipping over tiers of gear or entire levels of content. This is particularly relevant when we’re talking about a new expansion. We don’t want level-85 players to have a reasonable shot at level-90 dungeons and raids (or PvP opponents) just because that content is balanced for gear that isn’t much better than what the level-85 players have.

So we arrived at this point in a logical fashion, and we don’t really think we should have handled things any differently. However, it’s still a weird place to be, and it’s about to get weirder. These aren’t real items, in that we don’t know for sure what the item levels will be in patch 5.3 and patch 6.3 (if only we planned that far ahead!) but they are reasonable guesses, and you can see just how ridiculous the items look.

Fig. 2. A theoretical item from patch 5.3.

Fig. 3. A theoretical item from patch 6.3.

So what do we do about it? There are two general categories of solutions. The first is to make the numbers appear more manageable and the second is to actually change the numbers.

Mega Damage
The first solution could include changes like adding commas and the like to large numbers. We could also compress all of those 1000s to Ks and all of those 1,000,000s to Ms, much like we do with boss health today. Internally, we have been calling this the “Mega Damage solution” because instead of your Fireball hitting for 6,000,000 damage, it would hit for 6 MEGA DAMAGE (queue the Arcanite Ripper guitar solo).

Fig. 4. Mega Damage. Name/screenshot not to be taken seriously.

If we can make numbers such as floating combat text and boss health and item stats a little easier to read at a glance, then maybe we can endure numbers increasing exponentially for many digits to come. Now there are some very real computational limitations. PCs just can’t quickly perform math on very large numbers, so we’d have to solve all of those problems as well. Even today, tanks can hit the ten digit threat cap on some encounters.

Item Level Squish
The second solution actually involves compressing item levels, which is why we call it the “item level squish solution.” If we can lower stats on items, then we can lower every other number in the game as well, such as how much damage a Fireball does or how much health a gronn has. If you look at the item level curves, you can see that most of the growth occurs at the maximum character levels for the various expansions. This is because we keep rewarding more and more powerful gear to make the new raid tier and PvP season in an expansion reward significantly better gear than the previous one. However, those huge item level jumps don’t accomplish a lot once the character level has increased again. Very few players notice or care how much of an upgrade the Black Temple loot is over the Serpentshrine Cavern loot when their characters are level 80.

With that in mind, we could go back and compress the big item level increases that occur at level 60, 70, 80 and 85. The Mists of Pandaria gear would still grow exponentially from patch to patch, but the baselines would be a lot lower. Health could go from 150,000 back down to something like 20,000. The big risk of this approach is that players will log into the new expansion and feel nerfed… even if all the other numbers are compressed as well.

In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller. Logically, this seems like it would work, and it does. But it feels weird. When we tried this internally, everyone agreed that it just felt off throwing a spell for hundreds of damage when you are used to it doing thousands of damage.

I came up with an analogy -- even though I know logically that people drive on the left side of the street in the UK (we drive on the right side of the street in the US) and wouldn’t be surprised to see it, it would still feel really disorienting if I was driving in the UK and had to make a right-hand turn.

So Now What?
As I type this today, we haven’t decided on which if either solution we want to try. Maybe we’ll come up with yet another solution. Maybe it’s the kind of thing we can put off for another expansion so that players don’t have to adjust to the new talent system and a drastic item level compression at the same time. Or maybe it’s better just to pull the Band-Aid off fast and fix everything at once. Time will tell. I did, however, want to outline the problem lest any of you believe we don’t think there is a problem. There is. We’re just not sure of the best solution yet. If your answer is that stat budgets don’t have to grow so much in order for players to still want the gear, our experience says otherwise, and thus these proposed solutions exist. Your thoughts on the matter are valuable.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. The last time he used “Fig. 5” in an article, it related fish predation to estuarine hydrocarbon contamination.

Public Test Realm Patch 4.3 Notes: Updated Nov. 4

Of particular note:

The achievement Tol Barad Veteran now requires 25 victories in Tol Barad, down from 100.

Death Knight pets now properly inherit their master’s crit and spell penetration stats.

Unholy: The gargoyle called by Summon Gargoyle should exclusively use its ranged attack regardless of range to the target.

Updates to the patch notes below can be found in red. Last updated Nov. 4, 10:00 AM PDT.

The time for testing out many of the upcoming patch 4.3 features is upon us. In this article you’ll find frequent updates to the official patch 4.3 notes as development continues. You can find a list of the major features we’ve discussed thus far on our official forums.

If you’ll be testing this major content patch, be sure to visit the PTR Discussion forum often to share your thoughts with the community. We also recommend visiting the PTR Bug Report forum to document any issues you come across.

This new grouping feature allows players to quickly and easily form a pick-up raid for a specially tuned version of the current tier of endgame content: the Dragon Soul raid. Raid Finder is now available for testing. Your participation and feedback here is appreciated.

This new feature allows players to customize their gear like never before. You'll find Transmogrification, Void Storage, and Reforging vendors in Cathedral Square, Stormwind and The Drag, Orgrimmar. The costs associated with this service are not yet final.

In addition to the bank, players will now have access to a new "deep storage" system, allowing characters to free bag space by setting aside coveted gear. You'll find Transmogrification, Void Storage, and Reforging vendors in Cathedral Square, Stormwind and The Drag, Orgrimmar. The costs associated with this service are not yet final.

Reforging

The former Reforging vendors have been... retired. The ethereals have chosen to take over the business and joined their Transmogrification and Void Storage service providers. You'll find them in Cathedral Square, Stormwind and The Drag, Orgrimmar.

Outland & Northrend Quest Flow

The amount of experience needed to gain levels 71 through 80 has been reduced by approximately 33%.

Many Group quests in Outland and Northrend have been re-tuned to allow players to complete them solo. They are no longer labeled as Group quests.

Relevant questgivers have been moved into Outland and Northrend dungeons. The majority of dungeon quests for these zones are now available from within their respective dungeons.

North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change.

All raid and party buffs which grant group members 10% increased attack power have been changed slightly. They continue to provide 10% increased ranged attack power, but now provide 20% increased melee attack power.

Abomination's Might: The melee attack power bonus from this raid buff has been increased to 10/20%, up from 5/10%. The ranged attack power bonus remains 5/10%.

Blessing of Might: The melee attack power bonus from this raid buff has been increased to 20%, up from 10%. The ranged attack power bonus remains 10%.

Runescroll of Might: The melee attack power bonus from this consumable has been increased to 16%, up from 8%. The ranged attack power bonus remains 8%.

Trueshot Aura: The melee attack power bonus from this raid buff has been increased to 20%, up from 10%. The ranged attack power bonus remains 10%.

Unleashed Rage: The melee attack power bonus from this raid buff has been increased to 10/20%, up from 5/10%. The ranged attack power bonus remains 5/10%.

Vengeance for Protection warriors, Protection paladins, Blood death knights, and Feral druids has been redesigned slightly. It no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken by the tank generates Vengeance equal to 33% of the damage taken by that attack. In addition, as it updates periodically during the fight, it's always set to at least 33% of the damage taken by the tank in the last 2 seconds. It still climbs from that point at the rate it did previously, still decays when damage is not taken, and still cannot exceed a maximum based on the health and Stamina of the tank.

Threat generated by classes in active tanking modes has been increased to 500% damage done, up from 300%. This applies to druids in Bear Form, death knights in Blood Presence, warriors in Defensive Stance, and paladins with Righteous Fury active.

Spells which have an effect broken by taking damage past a threshold (Entangling Roots, Fear, Frost Nova, etc.) now count damage that was prevented by damage absorbs or other damage reducing effects.

Death Strike now heals the death knight whether or not the attack misses, or is dodged/parried. As a result of this change, Death Strike no longer refunds its rune cost if it fails to hit the target, as the death knight will still receive the healing effect.

Blood Presence now provides an armor bonus of 55%, up from 30%.

Death Knight pets now properly inherit their master’s crit and spell penetration stats.

Talent Specializations

Blood

Blade Barrier has been redesigned. It now passively reduces damage taken.

Bone Shield now has 6 charges, up from 4.

Veteran of the Third War now reduces the cooldown of Outbreak by 30 seconds.

Unholy

Unholy Might now increases Strength by 25%, up from 20%.

The gargoyle called by Summon Gargoyle should exclusively use its ranged attack regardless of range to the target.

Holy Radiance now has a 3.0-second cast time, no cooldown, and requires a player target. That target is imbued with Holy Radiance, which heals them and all group members within 10 yards instantly, and continues to heal them by a smaller amount every 1 second for 3 seconds.

Seal of Insight, when Judged, no longer returns 15% base mana to the paladin. Judging Seal of Insight still causes damage, and melee attacks will still restore 4% of base mana.

Seal of Truth, when Judged, now benefits from a multiplier of 20% per stack of Censure, up from 10%.

Talent Specializations

Holy

Clarity of Purpose now also reduces the cast time of Holy Radiance.

Illuminated Healing (mastery) now also applies to Holy Radiance.

Infusion of Light now applies its cast time reduction from Holy Shock critical effects to Holy Radiance, in addition to its current effects.

In addition to providing haste, the effect from Judgements of the Pure now increases mana regeneration from Spirit by 10/20/30% for 60 seconds.

Light of Dawn now affects 6 targets (base effect), up from 5.

Paragon of Virtue now lowers the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15/30 seconds, up from 10/20 seconds.

Speed of Light no longer triggers from Holy Radiance and no longer lowers the Holy Radiance cooldown. Speed of Light now only triggers from Divine Protection.

Tower of Radiance, in addition to its current effects, now also causes Holy Radiance to always generate 1 charge of Holy Power at all times.

Beacon of Light is triggered by Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing.

Retribution

Sanctified Retribution now increases the critical hit chance of Hammer of Wrath by 2/4/6%, down from 20/40/60%.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (passive) now increases damage by 25%, up from 20%.

Glyphs

Glyph of Light of Dawn now lowers the number of targets to 4, instead of increasing targets to 6, but increases healing by 25%.

Flametongue Weapon no longer increases spell damage. It now increases all non-physical damage done by the wielder by 5%.

Lightning Bolt has a new spell effect.

Wind Shear’s base cooldown has been adjusted to 15 seconds, up from 6 seconds.

Talent Specializations

Elemental

Call of Flame no longer causes Fire Nova to extend the duration of Flame Shock.

Earthquake damage has been increased by roughly 75%.

Elemental Fury now removes the cooldown from Chain Lightning.

Reverberation now reduces the cooldown of Wind Shear by 5/10 seconds, up from 0.5/1 second.

Shamanism now increases the spell power benefit to Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, and Chain Lightning by 36%, up from 32%.

Enhancement

Improved Lava Lash now causes Lava Lash to spread a Flame Shock debuff from the target to up to 4 nearby targets. This excludes crowd-controlled targets and those who already have a Flame Shock debuff from the shaman.

Improved Lava Lash no longer increases base Lava Lash damage by 15/30%. This increase has been rolled into the base Lava Lash skill.

Mental Quickness has been redesigned. Instead of granting the shaman spell power, Mental Quickness now causes Enhancement shaman spells to behave as though the shaman has spell power equal to 55% of attack power. Enhancement shaman spells no longer benefit from spell power from other sources.

Maelstrom Weapon can now also proc from fully absorbed melee attacks.

Restoration

Ancestral Healing now also causes the shaman's heals to increase the target's maximum health by 5/10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of the target's maximum health, for 15 seconds. This effect does not stack if multiple Restoration shaman are present, and does not apply to heals from procs.

Riptide's periodic healing coefficient has been increased by 50%. The initial direct heal is unchanged.

Charge (and related abilities) should now correctly path to a target even if the target moves during the Charge. This change should decrease the likelihood of the warrior Charging to a different location than the target.

Slam now uses a new character attack animation.

Colossus Smash now uses a new character attack animation.

Talent Specializations

Arms

Mortal Strike now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.

Players who use Dungeon Finder for a random Heroic dungeon will no longer be locked to that instance. Previously, players who entered an instance via the Random Dungeon option were then prohibited from queuing for that dungeon or entering the instance manually via the portal. Players should now always be able to complete a specific Heroic dungeon once per day regardless of any random dungeons completed.

Ruins of Ahn'qiraj

Bosses in Ruins of Ahn'qiraj now drop a rare-quality Scarab Coffer Key which can be used to open the Scarab Coffers found within. These keys are zone-bound to Ruins of Ahn'qiraj and have a 17-hour expiration. This change also applies to Greater Scarab Coffer Keys used to open Large Scarab Coffers.

Zul’Gurub

Players now only have to kill two of the four initial dungeon bosses (High Priest Venoxis, Broodlord Mandokir, High Priestess Kilnara, and Zanzil) to face Jin’do the Godbreaker.

Zul’Aman

Players now only have to kill two of the four Troll avatars before they may face Hex Lord Malacrass.

Archaeology areas of interest will now show on the mini-map, in addition to the World Map.

Bag Search

A search field has been added to allow players to search bag, bank, guild bank, and Void Storage inventories for specific items.

Guilds with inactive guild leaders can now usurp the leader under specific conditions. More information on this coming soon.

The Reforging interface has been updated and improved.

Quest Tracking areas or points of interest will now show on the mini-map, in addition to the World Map.

The World Map now displays the expected character levels for each zone.

Added a “promote everyone” checkbox that will automatically make all raid members, Raid assistants. This checkbox can be found in the Raid Frame and the Unit Frame “pull-out” tab.

There are now commands for world markers & unit markers.

Added new rotation, zoom, and pan controls are now available in all windows with player models in UI frames.

Players can now unlearn profession specialization without unlearning the profession (Engineering & Alchemy).

[Mac] Added functionality to allow using the Command key instead of the Control key on Apple keyboards. This can be enabled in Mac Options.

[Mac] Added functionality to disable Mac OS system keyboard shortcuts so that they do not interfere with keyboard shortcuts in WoW. This can be enabled in Mac Options.

Added a feature to interact with NPCs, game objects (mailbox, mining nodes, etc.), and corpses on left-click as well as right-click. There is now an option under Interface:Controls to turn this feature off.

Post by pezz

His analogy seems to suggest that the compression is the way to go. You get used to driving on the other side of the road. It's weird for a couple months, but then you get so used to it it's weird to go back and readjust to how you used to drive.

The fact that players will temporarily feel a little weird about losing a whole bunch of digits on the end of some numbers seems so trivial to me that it doesn't even count as a proper objection to that solution.

Post by Zulmax

I think that sound great! It will be to overpowered with like "yeeh my highest crit is 9128512"And back in vanilla it was like "yeh my highest crit is 2000" Good job!

Post by Kolhorry

The Ilvl squish is a good idea, but i don't think that it should be done so drastically (nerfing stats by 30-50% would be enough)

Post by Darmalus

Awww, I was looking forward to one shotting vanilla raid bosses in MoP. Oh well, times must change.

Post by astariaxv

For me, this all depends on if they're going to adjust the numbers of mobs and bosses too. I'm fine with the squish if it happens across the board.

Otherwise I want the mega damage.

Post by Dkinator

while going back to smaller numbers would feel like a nerf, it would also just be ridiculous to see someone having 800,000 health. I hope they can come up with a solution soon. But either way, people are still going to QQ

Post by kyrierain

The item level squish would be much better solution I think but then 12 mega damage is making me think otherwise. PvP, Shield of the Righteous for 20 Mega Damage? drool =D

Post by Kolhorry

The item level squish would be much better solution I think but then 12 mega damage is making me think otherwise. PvP, Shield of the Righteous for 20 Mega Damage? drool =D

Post by Destinies

Squish, please.

Pealing off "big numbers" is all relative. Buddy of mine mentioned how he crit something in DnD for like 97 dmg and that was a big deal. For the context of the environment, it was.

I'd much rather analyze fewer numbers than more. It changes literally nothing if hp/dmg of everything is a % shift down.The concern about players feeling nerfed should be inconsequential. Anyone who thinks they are nerfed because of a global stat squish failed 5th grade math. Plus people will get used to it.

Post by tracyle

I say go ahead and rip the Band-Aid off... Or... go with your MegaDamage graphic above, but it has to have audio with it in the style of Scott Pilgrim... LOL.

Post by AnonAmbientLight

Awww, I was looking forward to one shotting vanilla raid bosses in MoP. Oh well, times must change.

Ghostcrawler said that you'll still do the same % of damage.

"In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller. Logically, this seems like it would work, and it does. But it feels weird. When we tried this internally, everyone agreed that it just felt off throwing a spell for hundreds of damage when you are used to it doing thousands of damage." - Ghostcrawler

Post by EtaParseids

I agree with the idea of the squish, my only concern is how it will translate to lower level gear. Would you apply a 50% reduction in stats across the board for ALL gear? Or would this be a reduction in the severity of the stat increase as an item's ilvl increases?

Post by EtaParseids

P.S. Just rip the band-aid off. That way the QQ may be more severe for a short while, but the sting will go away sooner.

Post by YannyRamz

ilvl squish for the win. Yes, it will be weird at first. There are changes on every expansion anyways, plus new expansions should be like starting fresh =

Level your character/(s)

Level your profession/(s)

Get rep for new factions

Farm gear

Farm mats and crap

Learn new bosses

New talent system

...etc

...etc

...You get the point. Yes, at first people will complain, and we might lose some players; but doesn't that always happen anyways (even in the middle of the expansion). I think the mega damage idea while it looks cool, it can get complex QUICK. While the ilvl squish theory might require more thought, I think it's a better solution -- or a new proposition altogether. We'll see.

Post by Arrd

I realy liked the sixty two thousand and four armour. lol

Post by celexis17

I'm in favor of the number squish. From what I could tell from the article not only would item, and spell stat numbers change, but so would the bosses and healths of other things. I think smaller numbers are nice, I personally liked it where 8-10k dps was amazing if you could do it, to me being able to do 20k dps is outrageous. Even if you were to continue to go higher on numbers people would still have to adjust for what the new "max" best dps, or hps would be, this way it might seem a bit more familiar and comfortable using smaller, easier to calculate, numbers. People I've talked to about the new expansion have mixed feelings, and the most common I hear is "silly", I think if the mega damage thing would be implemented then it would truly be considered as silly. It would make me feel like I was playing more of a children's game, and I feel it would drive away more of the logical players that play because they can calculate those numbers to get their dps just right, or what have you. It'd be kinda hard to calculate MEGA damage lol.

Post by Tarudizer

I agree with the idea of the squish, my only concern is how it will translate to lower level gear. Would you apply a 50% reduction in stats across the board for ALL gear? Or would this be a reduction in the severity of the stat increase as an item's ilvl increases?

Im guessing vanilla gear/bosses health/etc would be untouched. Its only the massive stat boosts in the beginning of each expansion that woud be affected (again, purely guessing)

Personally I think its an absolutely GREAT idea. Yes, people with @#$%^. People will always &*!@#, as you are well aware of. Im sure by now you have come across a few "OMG WHY PANDAS BLIZZ, R U JOKING?" threads. Some will quit. Some will deal with it. Some will completely change their mind and realize that Pandarens are bloody awesome.

If this goes on, we'll have a trizillion (even have to make up new numbers!) of health by the time we are lvl 100. The idea of "mega damage" to me is... well, it COULD work. Certainly could. I wouldnt go that way, however. As someone said, we will adjust. Faster than we thought too.

Post by lordlundar

Ah, the Mega Damage component. Gonna take a page from Palladium Entertainment were we?

For those of you wondering, Palladium Entertainment makes the PnP Role playing Game called RIFTS, a Post Apocalyptic Sci-Fi theme. Damage levels in that game got so out of control that they came up with a new category called Mega Damage Capacity (MDC) and renamed the old one to Structural Damage Capacity (SDC).

In terms of raw numbers, 1 MDC equals 1000 SDC and if a weapon hits a like categorized target (MDc to MDC or SDC to SDC) then the damage is calculated normally. When it crosses over though, that's where it gets fun. you see, it's not just about raw numbers. SDC targets being hit by MDC weapons would be instantly vaporized and SDC weapons striking MDC targets might as well be shooting spitballs (has the same effect, aka zilch)

The fun part about this? most non-military structures are SDC structures while most players and their adversaries tend to be equipped with MDC armor and weapons. Urban and indoor battles took on whole new levels of meaning.

Post by Darmalus

Awww, I was looking forward to one shotting vanilla raid bosses in MoP. Oh well, times must change.

Ghostcrawler said that you'll still do the same % of damage.

"In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller. Logically, this seems like it would work, and it does. But it feels weird. When we tried this internally, everyone agreed that it just felt off throwing a spell for hundreds of damage when you are used to it doing thousands of damage." - Ghostcrawler

Look at that graph (fig. 1) again. In level 80 tier 10 gear, it would take me the same number of hits before and after the stat squish to kill the Lich King. However, later sets of gear would be much weaker vs old content after the stat squish. The vanilla gear tops out around ilvl 100, WotLK gear around ilvl 300 (numbers rounded for easy math). I can, say, 10 shot C'thun. Look at the second graph (fig. 5), the same gear would be would be ilvl 100 (tier 10) vs ilvl 75 (tier 2?). It would go from a 10 hit fight to a 20+ hit fight. This change would actually make old content HARDER after the stat squish, even tho in appropriate gear, it would be no more difficult.

Now is the time to faceroll some old raid achievements if you haven't already.

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